Creating the
future we want.
In our rapidly changing world, economic, social and technological changes are affecting sectors and regions across Canada. The Transition Accelerator is a pan-Canadian charity that works with groups across the country to direct these disruptions to solve business and social challenges while building viable transition pathways to a net zero future. Our current priorities are Canada’s hydrogen economy, electric vehicle market penetration, building decarbonization and electrification, and grid integration.
Canada needs a new approach to empower innovators, improve policy, and shift debate around climate change in a more constructive direction. This is it.
Halocarbon management in Quebec
Halocarbons are gases mostly used as refrigerants in heat transfer systems, for cooling in air-conditioning and refrigeration systems, and for heating in heat pumps. However, several of these gases, when released in the atmosphere, deplete the ozone layer and increase global warming. Therefore, the Montreal protocol, and the Kigali amendment afterwards, were ratified by most of the countries in the world, with the objective to better control these gases and reduce their impact on the environment. Following these protocols, the management of halocarbons is framed with a strict regulation in Quebec, where the exploitation of the most dangerous gases and the voluntary emission in the atmosphere of other halocarbons is forbidden. At the end of life of devices working with such gases, the owners have the obligation to hire a specialized company to recover these gases. These companies can then treat the gases, to be able to use them again, or destroy them
Challenges, levers and obstacles to the decarbonization of commercial and institutional buildings in Quebec
The maturity of technologies to decarbonize buildings allows the sector to resolutely engage on this track with a tight schedule to compensate the difficulties met by other sectors, like transport.
Technical Brief: The Techno-Economics of Hydrogen Pipelines
The purpose of this ‘technical brief’ is to describe how to carry out techno-economic analyses for pure hydrogen pipelines, including their sizing, operating and cost estimating. The primary focus of this work is on the design and costing of pipelines transporting large volumes of hydrogen across large distances.
However, the principles discussed here can be used to explore the cost of smaller, shorter pipelines to serve
applications such as a fueling station or the blending of hydrogen into natural gas distribution systems.
Report: Disruptive forces influencing the sustainability of Canada’s agri-food sector
This report examines recent developments in Canada’s agri-food sector, focusing on emerging trends with
the potential to disrupt existing practices and their implications for sustainability.
Technical Brief: The Techno-Economics of Hydrogen Compression
This technical brief supports the analysis stage (#3) in the Accelerator’s work to identify credible, compelling transition pathways to a vibrant hydrogen economy in Canada. It is intended to provide a tool that students, engineers, policy makers and entrepreneurs could use to assess the technical and economic feasibility of projects to produce, use and export low carbon hydrogen. The work also provides a technical reference to more cross-cutting Transition Accelerator Reports that will be published in the future and exploring regional or sectoral opportunities.
Report: Getting on an Efficient Decarbonization Track
This report’s objective is to quantify the economic benefits of creating better intertie capacity between electricity markets in northeastern North America. The benefits of better interconnecting northeastern electricity markets are significant in nature, but not widely acknowledged. Many decarbonization studies ignore integration, which is problematic when game-changing hydropower reservoirs could be used to help reduce the cost of integrating large amounts of intermittent renewable capacity.
